


Nicobobinus and Rosie are Properly Caffeinated

by vcmw



Category: Nicobobinus - Terry Jones
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Dragons, Epic Quests in Search of Caffeine, Gen, Guns, I apologize to the City of Venice about which I did no research whatsoever, Kidnapping, Pirate monks, The black ship is a building now, Warning for mistreatment of children by villains who receive their comeuppance, just because I want them to have cell phones and Rosie would be a catastrophe on the internet, the children are fine and do in fact get rescued and get their ice cream, unrealistic portrayals of boats ships fire and most other elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-05-27 09:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6279361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vcmw/pseuds/vcmw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Nicobobinus, the boy who could do anything, and his friend Rosie, and how they set out late one night to get a cup of coffee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How Nicobobinus and Rosie Did Not Buy a Cup of Coffee

Nicobobinus had gotten used to being best friends with Rosie in the same way that someone got used to living on the lip of an active volcano, or dancing on stilts, or trying to drink tea while sky-diving. The key, Nicobobinus felt, was to try and keep both your balance and your sense of perspective.

So when Rosie called him up at two in the morning, Nicobobinus answered the phone.

“Let’s clean all the grout in your bathroom with q-tips!” Rosie shouted into the phone. It was possible she was drunk. It was also possible she was entirely sober.

“Let’s not!” Nicobobinus said, just as enthusiastically. Enthusiasm went a long way in managing Rosie.

“Fine then,” Rosie said. “Let’s get coffee at the coffeehouse down the street.”

“I’ll meet you there once I have pants on,” Nicobobinus said.

“No one needs pants,” Rosie said. “Also, we could walk over together.”

“You’re already waiting on my doorstep,” Nicobobinus said. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Rosie said. “I was just admiring your Dracaena Draco tree, and thinking how convenient it is that your hand and feet aren’t still made of gold, because someone who is your very best friend helped you out with that, and so now you should buy your best friend a cup of coffee.”

“You’re on my doorstep and you don’t have any money, do you?”

“Not just at the moment, but I’m sure some will turn up.” This was probably true. In just the last month Nicobobinus had seen Rosie find a winning lottery ticket, a diamond ring (which turned out to be stolen), and six gold coins that she dropped into a wishing fountain before wishing for an ice cream cone.

“I’ll be down as soon as I have pants on.”

Nicobobinus hurried putting on his pants because Rosie alone and bored on his doorstep was a possible disaster.

“Your pants are on inside out,” Rosie said when he opened the door.

“Your head is on inside out,” Nicobobinus said, and locked the door behind him.

“Probably.” Rosie tipped her head to the side and grinned.

“We need to find coffee or I might fall asleep right here in the street,” Rosie said, and grabbed his hand. She started running, so he had to start running too, in his inside-out-pants.

The all-night coffeeshop they always went to was closed. A sign on the door said they’d had a plumbing explosion. Rosie stared desolately through the plate glass window. The floor was covered in a sheen of water. She tried the brass door handle several times, but it stayed obstinately locked.

“What’s that?” Rosie asked, staring at the glass.

“A coffeeshop that’s closed, where you can’t buy any coffee,” Nicobobinus said.

“No, that, behind us. Look in the reflection in the glass!” Rosie said.

The glass reflected a brightly lit building behind them, candlelight glowing between black-stained wooden window frames.

Nicobobinus spun around. There was just an empty lot on the other side of the street.

“That is the kind of a building where people stay up all night,” Rosie said. “The kind of a building where people would have really, amazingly excellent coffee.”

Nicobobinus looked back and forth between the brightly lit reflection in the glass and the empty lot behind him. The door in the reflection was temptingly open.

“Do you think, if I ran backward very quickly, I could run right into the building before it disappeared behind me?” Nicobobinus asked.

“Of course you can!” Rosie said. “You can do anything.”

That was the blessing and the problem of Rosie, really. She thought that Nicobobinus could do anything. When she was around, so did Nicobobinus, which was why he’d been arrested fifteen times. Fourteen of the times had been because of Rosie and one time had been at a festival where they were both dressed up as the same Green Dragon with Flower, and the guardsman thought he was Rosie. Nicobobinus did not think that time should actually count against Rosie, which was an opinion his mother and his most recent ex-boyfriend did not share.

“There’s probably not even really a building there,” he said.

“The building must be there, because we can see it,” Rosie said. “So I’ll keep a very firm eye on it and you run quickly.”

Nicobobinus started running backward. He couldn’t explain why. It was just that when he was around Rosie he knew that the rules of reality got slippery, and it was easier (and, he guiltily admitted, more entertaining) to go along with her and see what happened. (Probably I would have done the same thing.)

He watched Rosie watch him in the reflection until he tripped on the doorstep and fell backward through the black wooden door of the shop that shouldn’t be there.

“I knew you could do it!” he heard Rosie shout, and then the door slammed shut in front of him and he felt claws grip his shoulder.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” a high pitched voice said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited this first chapter a bit because why did I have two paragraphs of unrelated backstory at the beginning? I have no idea. They're gone now.


	2. What Happened on the Other Side of the Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now if you or I were grabbed by a clawed hand suddenly from behind, we would probably waste time wondering “what is that thing?” or screaming. At least, I would, and I assume you would too, because the experience would be entirely new to us. Nicobobinus, on the other hand, had spent a good part of his childhood being kidnapped by strangers, attacked by pirate monks, assaulted by Venetian capitalists, and, what is more important, meeting with dragons.
> 
> So when he felt the claws tearing into his third-best shirt, his first thought was “But it can’t be! There are no dragons in Venice!”

Now if you or I were grabbed by a clawed hand suddenly from behind, we would probably waste time wondering “what is that thing?” or screaming. At least, I would, and I assume you would too, because the experience would be entirely new to us. Nicobobinus, on the other hand, had spent a good part of his childhood being kidnapped by strangers, attacked by pirate monks, assaulted by Venetian capitalists, and, what is more important, meeting with dragons.

So when he felt the claws tearing into his third-best shirt, his first thought was “But it can’t be! There are no dragons in Venice!”

“They all believed that you were a friend to the dragons,” the voice said. “But I didn’t believe. You never joined in our choir practice! You never shared your ice cream cones with us. And once you went home, you never came back to visit.”

“I didn’t have a map,” Nicobobinus protested. “And Basilcat sailed away with the black ship. There wasn’t any way I could visit.”

The dragon’s shout was equal parts whistle and steam. It sounded like an angry teakettle left too long on the stovetop.

“You’re worse than the Golden Knights! At least we knew what they were doing, with their golden arrows and their golden nets, and their horrible palace dungeons.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” Nicobobinus protested. He thought it sounded rather weak. So did the dragon, which picked him up and began shaking him back and forth. The dragon was quite a young one, only a little bit taller than Nicobobinus, but tremendously strong. The tips of Nicobobinus’s toes brushed the floor as the dragon shook him back and forth like a yo-yo on a string.

“Exactly! You didn’t do anything. Dragons imprisoned all over Venice! Dragons mistreated! And you didn’t do anything.”

“You’re the first dragon I’ve ever seen in Venice,” Nicobobinus said.

“Then you weren’t looking.”

There were a lot of things that Nicobobinus looked for in Venice: a good taco stand, an all-night coffee shop not filled with horrible hipster pirates dressed in black who stared past him with bloodshot eyes. He’d even gone looking, on certain occasions that he would never admit to Rosie, for the perfect place to carve a little bit of graffiti, a bad habit he had picked up on his travels. There were smooth, uncial N’s carved in pillars all over the city.

Except when Rosie suggested it, Nicobobinus had never gone looking for dragons.

Half past two in the morning with a dragon steaming fiercely behind him and Nicobobinus started to have a familiar thought: “This is all Rosie’s fault.”

The dragon dropped Nicobobinus abruptly on to the smooth black wood of the floor. Nicobobinus stayed where he’d been dropped. The dragon folded itself up into a corner to glare at Nicobobinus. “I don’t know why I thought you would help. I’ll go find Nicobobinus, I thought. He helped us before. We said he was a friend to the dragons. Surely he’ll help us again. This is all your fault.”

Sullen trickles of steam rose from the dragon’s nostrils.

The two of them stared awkwardly at each other. It was clear that the dragon hadn’t thought about anything much past the initial confrontation. Find Venice! Find Nicobobinus! And then all its problems would be solved.

Quarter to three in the morning, his shoulder stinging and his head aching, Nicobobinus had a new thought, one he’d never thought before. His nineteen exes, his mother, and his father, if they could read minds, would all have been very much astonished. Rosie only got him into all that trouble because he wanted her to keep his life interesting.

It was a bit selfish of him, really, putting all the blame for the trouble on Rosie, when really he wanted excitement and purpose. He liked action but he needed a bit of a push to get himself rolling. It wasn’t that he should stop doing things when Rosie had suggested them, which was the wrong idea most of his exes and his parents had always started with.

Nicobobinus should absolutely keep doing things when Rosie suggested them, because Rosie’s ideas were excellent. What needed to change was that Nicobobinus should take more turns coming up with trouble for Rosie to get in with him.

He rubbed his head and slowly got up. His feet were a bit unsteady underneath him. They’d never been quite the same after they’d been turned into gold: even after they were turned back they’d stayed a bit stiff, a bit yellow, and they tended to ache in bad weather. In college he’d worn special orthopedic trainers.

“Stop crying,” he told the dragon, rather rudely. “I’ll help. Of course I’ll help.”

The door creaked open. Rosie slipped through the door. She was carrying a flower pot, ready to throw it or swing it into someone’s head. There hadn’t been any flowerpots on this block, so she must have gone looking for a weapon with plausible deniability behind it before she followed him into the building that was also a vacant lot.

Rosie charged into trouble, but she charged in prepared. He let the grin he’d been fighting slip out.

“Rosie will help too,” he said. He owed it to Rosie to get her into some truly spectacular trouble. They’d used to switch back and forth a lot more. He’d gotten dull and stiff and old.

“What will I help with?” Rosie asked. She kept the flowerpot raised.

The dragon sniffed. It looked at the flowerpot Rosie was carrying, which was still full of flowers. “You remembered I love daisies!” it said. “Oh, that’s so kind.” Fat tears rolled down its cheeks to vanish in little puffs of steam.

“The babies loved daisies too!” it wailed.

“The babies?”

“The baby dragons! I was supposed to look after them and they’ve all been kidnapped! You have to help me find them.”


	3. We Cannot Recommend Smelling Your Way Around Venice

There were certain questions that you are supposed to ask if someone tells you about a horrible crime. Nicobobinus had gone to an online journalism course and learned about several of them before he realized that if he pursued a career as a journalist he’d end up spending half his time reporting on Rosie, which sounded too boringly like his current life except with homework added.

“How did the baby dragons get kidnapped? Why would anyone even want to kidnap baby dragons? And who exactly are you?” Nicobobinus asked.

“My name is Timorit.” The small dragon sniffed and accepted the pot of daisies from Rosie. “And you ought to know perfectly well why someone would kidnap a dragon. You were there when the Golden Knights kidnapped dragons to heat their palaces.”

“We rescued the Dragon Ashkanet from that boiler room,” Rosie said.

Timorit trembled all over when Rosie mentioned the Dragon Ashkanet. “Ooooh, Ashkanet said I was not old enough to watch the dragon nursery, but I said I was old enough. I could lead them in their singing practice. And…” it dissolved into a sodden lump, crying hot tears that landed on the daisy petals and scalded them.

"It's not your fault," Rosie said. "It could happen to anyone."

"But it is my fault! I went to the kitchen to get gelato for our afternoon snack, and when I came back the baby dragons were all gone. Mik and Mike and Mack and Malik, all gone!"

“I don't see why anyone would steal a baby dragon to heat a palace. A baby dragon would hardly have enough steam in it to heat a cup of coffee,” Nicobobinus said.

Rosie stared at him. “That’s it. Nicobobinus, you’re a genius.”

“What’s it?” Nicobobinus asked. 

“Heating cups of coffee. Steam. Those new espresso machines the coffee shops have been testing, with their golden controls.”

“They kidnapped baby dragons to run their espresso machines?”

“They’d have to be quite small dragons to fit, but there’d be no need to run in gas piping, or fiddle with the pressure. Just squeeze a poor baby into that metal cage and then… oh, and I’ve drunk espresso from those machines.”

Rosie looked like she was going to be sick. 

“So Basilcat loaned me his ship,” Timorit said. “And I sailed here to look for the babies.”

“Why here?” 

“King Pactolus was defeated. The City of Cries was destroyed. Someone thought you must have kidnapped the dragons, because who else had visited the Land of Dragons and knew the city’s secrets? So we started by looking for you. Because, as the Great Dragon said, either you knew who had done this or you knew where to look for them.”

“Nicobobinus would never kidnap baby dragons to imprison them in espresso machines,” Rosie said. 

“I got here and I couldn’t find Nicobobinus,” Timorit said, ignoring Rosie completely. “So I started started smelling around for the baby dragons.”

“Smelling, not looking?” asked Nicobobinus. 

“Baby dragons smell like burnt cinnamon and nutmeg,” the small dragon said. “I sniffed my way across Venice which is not an experience I recommend. I particularly cannot recommend sniffing near the canals at noon on a hot day. My nose got full of smells and I still had not found the missing baby dragons. I thought I’d found one in that shop across the street. But when I came back with the ship to rescue it, the shop was closed. I saw you come up to the shop and I waited to see what you would do.”

“We looked inside,” Rosie said. “The floors were flooded.”

“If there was a baby dragon there, it’s probably gone,” Nicobobinus said.

“Probably?” the small dragon Timorit waved the pot of daisies hopefully around.

“The shop is a mess. The sign said they had a plumbing explosion. But maybe their plumbing exploded because the dragon escaped.” Nicobobinus said.

"We should break into the shop," Nicobobinus and Rosie said at the same time. Nicobobinus looked at Rosie. Rosie looked at Nicobobinus. Their smiles were very large and would have frightened anyone who had known them before.


	4. In Which No One Respects the Laws Protecting Private Property

Nicobobinus had a book and a whole series of videos about picking locks. All of the instructions emphasized how simple the steps were as long as you kept calm and paid attention. None of the people writing those instructions, Nicobobinus thought, had ever tried to keep calm and pay attention while crowded close on one side by a woman who jumped up and down, continually jostling his elbow just at the fiddliest bits, and on the other side by a small dragon who breathed hotly down the back of his neck at unexpected moments. Their jostling caused him to jump and flail just as the tumblers were finally tumbling in some kind of order.

“Nicobobinus, I know you can do anything but we’re in a hurry,” Rosie said.

“The door is locked. I’m going as fast as I can.”

The dragon Timorit puffed steam down his neck again. Nicobobinus flailed his arms like a marionette whose strings were being pulled by an inebriated monkey (something Rosie and Nicobobinus had once spent a solid fifteen minutes watching and recording on their cell phones at a very unfortunate street festival).

“Yes, I can see that. As fast as you can isn’t very fast, though. The police come by at any moment.”

At this particular hour most of the police of Venice were writing long reports or safely asleep in their beds. There were in fact only three policewomen, one policeman, and one police person of no fixed gender awake and moving around the streets in the entire city of Venice. The policeman and the genderfluid police officer were investigating a crime at the Arsenale, one of the policewomen was so deep undercover that she no longer remembered her own name, and the other two policewomen were patrolling the Piazzas in search of lost tourists who they would return, like lambs in a parable, to the gentle arms of their moderately priced hoteliers. 

This meant there was almost no likelihood of the police happening along while Nicobobinus tried to pick the lock on the shop door. However, Rosie did not know this. She reached around Nicobobinus to snatch the flower pot from Timorit, and smashed in the glass pane at the top of the door. 

“We’ve been standing here for ten minutes,” Rosie said. “By this time anyone inside knows we’re coming. We don’t have to be subtle.”

Nicobobinus reached through the broken glass and unlocked the door. The paper sign about the plumbing accident fell into a puddle. “Rosie, you have never been subtle in your whole life.” It was possible Rosie would have smashed in the doorpane even if she knew that no police would be arriving. Rosie was generally in favor of smashing things.

The dragon Timorit pushed past them both and barged through the door. Since Nicobobinus still had his arm threaded through the door he ended up with his arm bent at an extremely particular angle. Timorit also managed to step on both of his feet as it rushed past.

“You two did not steal the baby dragons,” Timorit said. “If you had, you would have been talking at each other the whole time and you would have been caught in seconds.”

Rosie looked at Nicobobinus and Nicobobinus looked weakly back from where he was tangled in the door frame.

“We do manage to get a surprising amount done together.” Nicobobinus said.

Rosie, whose feet had not been stomped on by a dragon, strode quickly past Nicobobinus into the room and began casing the joint. Nicobobinus disentangled himself from the door and followed. 

Water puddled in the floor’s uneven spots. Nicobobinus sloshed as he walked around the corner. 

Broken copper pipe dripped into the pool of water around their feet. Polished wood sprouted a forest of torn edges where the espresso bar curved around the wreckage of the great gold and iron espresso machine.

Nicobobinus circled around the remnants of the espresso bar to poke at a dented piece of metal. Rosie and Timorit rushed back and forth. Rosie was shouting and Timorit’s tail kept splashing into the water. They were very bad at looking for clues.

“There’s a pile of broken chairs over here!” Rosie shouted.

Nicobobinus noticed a long strip of black cloth caught on a piece of wood.

“Someone must have been in a fight!” Timorit shouted.

Nicobobinus found a heavy sandal stuck beneath a broken piece of counter.

“It must have been knights!” Timorit shouted, somewhat louder.

The coarsely woven black cloth and the heavy sandal reminded Nicobobinus of things he usually tried to forget: the horrifying grin of the Abbot in his red robes, the black-clad monks surrounding the Abbot. They’d locked him in a cage balanced on a single rope over the cliff. Then they’d left another cage full of hungry rats to chew through the rope. It would have been a long drop down to the rocks.

“Probably evil police,” Rosie said. That was actually a reasonable suggestion.

Nicobobinus bent down to pick up the sandal. He recognized that sandal. He’d had one much like it thrown at his head once.

“Pirate monks,” Nicobobinus said.

“There’s no such thing as a pirate monk,” Timorit said.

“We would all like to believe that were true,” Rosie agreed. “What would pirate monks want with a baby dragon, though?”

“Probably they would like to kill them,” Nicobobinus said quite heartlessly. He was still thinking about how the monks had almost killed him, which had unfortunately quite skewed his thinking. The monks had only wanted to kill him so they could take his golden hand and feet and neck for their coffers. Baby dragons were not made of gold, and, when money was not involved, the monks only went around killing people and creatures on officially designated celebratory days. (Nicobobinus had never studied the Pirate Monk’s Devotional Calendar, for the very good reason that only one copy existed and it was housed in a monastery where Nicobobinus sensibly planned never to return. The Devotional Calendar listed nineteen days devoted to feasting, nineteen days devoted to fasting (most located right after the feasting days), seventeen days devoted to brewing specific types of beer, twelve days devoted to balancing accounts, four for righting wrongs, and only two for bashing random people over the head. And almost all the monks agreed that the Holiday of St. Smashem, which was written into the margins of the devotional, was not a canonical holiday and would not be observed except by Brother Stephens. During the High Holy Day of Brother Roller the Annunciated, the monks did rove the streets with two by fours in hand, celebrating the words of the Brother who preached that knowledge should descend upon the unrighteous like a blow from above. The local population mostly celebrated Brother Roller’s Day by picnicking quietly in the woods, far away from the monastery.)

Timorit wailed. The noise was a high squeal that rose and rose and ended on a sputtering hiss, like a blocked pipe that might explode at any second.

A man leaped out of a panel in the wall. He raced into the room, exactly like a man who feared that the pipes behind him might explode at any moment and boil him alive.

His shaved scalp gleamed with sweat. His face was red and sweaty. “Run,” he shouted, “run for your lives! There’s a dragon somewhere nearby and it’s about to explode!”


	5. Management Will Not Be Held Responsible for the Consequences of Your Actions

What Nicobobinus did not expect while looking for clues was to have a clue come running into the room, screaming and shouting.

To be fair, the man wasn't so much a clue as what, Nicobobinus suspected with deep discomfort, he ought to identify as a source instead of an opponent. That was to say, here was a man with information Nicobobinus would like to have, and the only way to get that information was to ask the man a number of questions. Which was unfortunate, because what Nicobobinus really wanted to do was hit the man over the head with a two by four. (Unbeknownst to Nicobobinus, it actually was the High Holy Day of Brother Roller, so if he had had a two by four and happened to hit the monk over the head with it, the monk would have been only slightly astonished.)

Fortunately for the monk, Nicobobinus did not have a two by four. He did have a friend with a flowerpot, though, and Rosie brandished the flower pot menacingly.

Nicobobinus snapped a quick pic of Rosie with the menacing pot of flowers raised high. Then he stuck the phone back in his pocket, scooped the flowerpot out of Rosie's hands, and plonked the pot into Timorit's outstretched arms, which neatly prevented Timorit from accidentally strangling the shouting monk.

Subtlety was not Nicobobinus's best approach, but that was ok. Subtlety was generally lost on screaming panicking people.

"There's a dragon right here!" Nicobobinus shouted, "but it's not going to explode."

The monk stopped to stare at Timorit in astonishment. He was astonished enough that he'd forgotten how to breathe and his already sweaty red face rapidly darkened through mauve towards an interesting shade of purple more commonly seen in heirloom tomatoes and partially ripened eggplants than in living people.

Nicobobinus helpfully hit the man hard on the back. "Breathe!" he shouted.

He'd gotten to hit the monk after all, which quite improved his opinion of the whole encounter. In fact, his mood improved sharply enough that he resigned himself to asking any number of necessary questions.

“Dragon. Here. Exploding.” The pirate monk gasped for air. His face faded from eggplant back to mauve to a sort of mottled red like cheap bricks.

“Why were you in the wall?” Nicobobinus asked.

The pirate monk stared at Nicobobinus. “Why are your pants on inside out?” he asked.

“Never mind his pants! What are you doing in Venice?” Rosie shouted.

“Where are the baby dragons!” hissed Timorit. His nostrils glowed and bits of flame dripped out of them as he leaned over the pirate monk.

The pirate monk sat down in a puddle of water on the floor and began to cry. Big salty tears rolled down his warm red cheeks.

“Become a monk they said! Travel the high seas they said! A life of adventure that’s right with the Lord, they said. Oh, if my dear mother should see me now. Alonzo, she would say, Alonzo my boy, I always told you you should join the Bricklayer’s Guild like your father.”

Nicobobinus scuffed one foot uncomfortably through a puddle.

“No one cares about what your dear mother would say,” Rosie pointed out. “Especially as she isn’t here and can’t answer our questions. What are you doing in Venice?”

“There’s hardly any gold to be seized on the high seas these days, what with international banking transactions being handled digitally. And internet piracy just doesn’t have the same panache. So Brother Zacharias suggested we get involved with zoos, exotic animal trades and such like.

“Zoos?” Timorit was grinding his teeth, which sent tiny sparks shooting off to flame out in the water covering the floor. “Zoos? You stole the dragons so young their second scales hadn’t even come in to sell them to a zoo?”

“No, no, of course not,” said the pirate. “There’s hardly any money in selling animals to zoos, it turns out. They have very small budgets, and there are reams and reams of paperwork. The real money is in private collectors. We were going to sell the dragons to movie stars and race car drivers. A small dragon would be just the kind of thing for staging great photographs on the red carpet. Only the dragons burned up the red carpets every time we tried to teach them how to sit for photographs. And Brother Yannik locked one up in a small box after it burned through the carpet, just to teach it a lesson. The box got frightfully warm, and Brother Yannik started leaving his coffee on it, so the coffee wouldn’t get cold. So we got the idea to sell them to espresso shops.”

“Why would you sell a poor baby dragon in a box to an espresso shop?”

“Espresso is a heathen beverage. So, if the shops burn down, it is no insult in the eyes of the Lord. And also the shops gave us discounts on our lattes, and paid several thousand dollars for each machine.”

“It’s not a machine. It’s a baby dragon!”

“You know that and I know that, and probably the espresso shop owners knew that, but everyone was much more comfortable if we called it a machine. Of course, we had to muzzle the dragons so they didn’t talk from inside the espresso boxes.”

“You’re despicable,” Rosie said.

“Oh, no Brother Despicable is a foot taller than me and makes the best mochas,” said the pirate monk. “I’m Brother Alonzo.”

“Brother Alonzo, you’re going to help us find those baby dragons and return them to their homes,” NIcobobinus said.

“No, I would much prefer not to. Brother Yannik and Brother Despicable would both be disappointed in me if I did that, and they express their disappointment very pointedly.”

“We’ll be disappointed in you if you don’t help us.” Rosie brandished her flower pot meaningfully. “And we’re right here. Tooth and claws and blunt instruments and all.”

“Yes, I see,” said Brother Alonzo. 

“Also,” Nicobobinus said, “I would like very much to punch you, and Timorit would like very much to smash you, but we will both refrain if you help us locate all the baby dragons tonight.”

“We will?” TImorit asked doubtfully.

“We will.” Nicobobinus said.

Brother Alonzo looked from Nicobobinus to Timorit and back again from TImorit to Nicobobinus. He stared longest at Rosie, who was tossing the flowerpot up in the air and catching it on the flat of her palm while whistling tunelessly. Rosie was, Nicobobinus knew, capable of whistling quite tunefully, but she felt that a tuneless whistle added a certain something to any air of menace. Like gravy, she’d once explained unhelpfully.

“I see.” Brother Alonzo stood up. His sandals and his robe were soaking wet. The strands of his tonsure were plastered around his scalp like a half-blown dandelion flattened in a sudden rainstorm. He looked quite pitiful, and Nicobobinus had to remind himself that Alonzo was a pirate monk, and a kidnapper of baby dragons.

“Brother Yannik repossessed the baby dragon that had been in this shop,” Brother Alonzo said. “They’d fallen behind in their payments.”

“Doesn’t the Bible speak against loaning money at interest?” Rosie asked.

“Oh, we don’t charge interest! That would be usury. It’s just that there’s a daily fee for the loan of the money, and a transaction charge for each payment on the money, and… oh, it’s all quite complicated. We let Brother Zekiel handle those kinds of questions. He’s the one who wrote our sign for the door. Lovely handwriting, Brother Zekiel.”

“So Brother Yannik has the dragon? Then why were you hiding in the wall?”

Brother Alonzo rubbed his hand over the wet dandelion fluff of his hair and cradled the knobby back of his skull protectively. “It’s Brother Roller’s Day,” Brother Alonzo explained. “And Brother Yannik is extremely enthusiastic in his celebratory use of the two by four. It seemed better to hide.”

Nicobobinus, Rosie, and Timorit leaned over Brother Alonzo, pinning him in from all sides. “Show us where to find Brother Yannik,” Nicobobinus said. “Or I’ll get quite enthusiastic with a two by four myself,” said Rosie.

“I believe it,” said Brother Alonzo. “You remind me of my mother, may she rest peacefully on a sofa far away from me.”

They herded Brother Alonzo toward the door.

“Oh, no, we’ll never get anywhere on the streets,” said Brother Alonzo. “We’d only end up dropped in a canal somewhere for our troubles. I have a boat out back.”

“Perfect,” said Nicobobinus. “Just what I’ve longed for. Getting in a boat with monks has always worked out so well for me in the past.” But he followed Rosie, who followed Brother Alonzo through the back of the shop and into a narrow hallway that opened out onto a canal where a small boat was tied.


	6. Brother Alonzo Has a Change of Clothes, but Not a Change of Heart

They all clambered into the boat. It was a difficult fit, like one of those wooden puzzles sold at the holidays that Nicobobinus only gave as presents to people he found frustrating. They ended up folded around each other with Rosie’s arm over Nicobobinus’s leg and Nicobobinus’s arms woven around the coils of Timorit’s tail. Timorit’s scales were just sharp enough that Nicobobinus thought his clothes were unlikely to survive, especially if Timorit kept twitching his tail like that.

Brother Alonzo, in the front of the boat, was lifting up the hem of his black cassock, exposing bruised shins and knobby knees.

“No one wants to see that,” Rosie said.

Brother Alonzo kept lifting his robe, fortunately without turning around to reply to Rosie. He revealed he was wearing baggy boxer shorts, also black, and a sort of scratchy looking tank top in a third black that didn’t go well with the black of his robe or the black of his shorts. He bent over and rummaged in a tote bag on the boat deck, pulling out another black robe that he shrugged on.

“That’s better,” Brother Alonzo said. “My dear mother warned me that it was always best to travel with a dry change of clothes.” 

“Very sensible,” said Rosie.

“Thank you,” said Brother Alonzo. “And of course, as Brother Yannik and my dear mother both so often recommend, I always store my spare gun with my spare robe.” He brandished an automatic pistol. The pistol, Nicobobinus noted, was also black. It managed to be very menacing for such a dim, hard to see object.

“I think I would like your mother immensely,” Rosie said. “You, I don’t like at all.”

“And the same to you,” Brother Alonzo said. He seemed to have recovered a lot of zest along with his dry robe and his pistol.

“Brother Zacharias will be delighted to see such a large dragon. We could get it cast in horror movies.”

Timorit began to hiss and sputter. 

“Residuals,” said Brother Alonzo dreamily. “Rebroadcasts. International markets.” 

Timorit harrumphed, leaking a small trickle of fire.

“There’s no point burning me now,” said Brother Alonzo. “You’d all drown.”

Nicobobinus knew that he could swim, and Rosie could swim. And dragons could all swim, though they tended to do the breaststroke like an old lady at the natatorium when they could, as they found it quite unpleasant to have their heads underwater for any length of time if they hadn’t had an opportunity to put in ear plugs and nose plugs first.

The canals of Venice were not likely to drown them. Nicobobinus had volunteered, however, with one of his ex-girlfriends, on a project that involved helping to clean out the canals. They’d only cleaned up three blocks of canal and they’d found rusted medical paraphernalia, an old shopping cart, a microwave, a mattress, several stuffed animals in varying states of horrifying decay, and a fungal infection that had taken multiple visits to the local clinic to fully dispel.

Nicobobinus wasn’t worried about drowning in the canal but he was exceptionally worried about what would happen to them after they hauled themselves back to shore.

“Besides,” said Brother Alonzo with what Nicobobinus spitefully considered entirely holy glee, “I’m only doing exactly what you asked. I’m taking you to see Brother Yannik and the baby dragons.”

Nicobobinus and Rosie found their conversational urges were fully repressed by the gun that Brother Alonzo kept waving. Timorit was lost in its own thoughts, leaking smoke and mumbling. Brother Alonzo pressed a few controls and fired up the outboard motor, and soon they were humming away down the canal.

“This zone forbids motorized vehicles,” Nicobobinus muttered to himself. 

“What’s that?” Brother Alonzo asked. 

“I said,” Nicobobinus began, but Rosie stomped on his foot, which set the boat to rocking in a nauseating fashion.

Brother Alonzo turned up the speed on the boat. “The only laws I follow are the laws of God!”

The boat twisted and turned, Brother Alonzo steering with one hand on the controls and one on his gun, until they came at last to the port and to a tall ship anchored there.

“She’s a beauty,” Brother Alonzo said, as he tied up the small boat at a spot just down the pier. “Come on you lot of heathens.” He herded them forward, waving his gun around as if he were a TV weatherman trying to explain the incoming path of a tropical storm.

Nicobobinus pondered what an unpleasant transformation the gun had brought out in Brother Alonzo’s personality, and added this experience to the long list of reasons that he didn’t like guns.

The list included the four times Rosie had tried to shoot apples off his head (which had resulted in damage to a window, a post box, a phone booth, and a display of pies, but fortunately had never involved Nicobobinus actually getting shot – the apples had survived all four attempts intact only to be eaten later). The list also included a very strange weekend he’d spent with his first ex-boyfriend and his boyfriend’s uncles fishing near Sicily. The uncles had used a gun to kill the fish they’d caught, and, in alternation with their piscean executions, to open the cans of beer they’d brought with them on the fishing trip. Nicobobinus’s anti-gun list was eclectic in many respects, but there was remarkable consistency about how he’d felt towards the guns in all those situations. This new situation was doing absolutely nothing to change his opinion.

Brother Alonzo prodded Nicobobinus, Rosie, and Timorit onto the deck of the ship.

“Brother Yannik, Brother Zacharias, Brother Zekiel, Brother Despicable,” Brother Alonzo shouted, “come up and see what I’ve found.”


	7. In Which the Disadvantages of Prior Cost-Cutting Decisions are Made Clear

“Bring whatever it is down here,” a voice shouted back. “We’ve just gotten comfortable.”

“Brother Yannik found a show about 100 Recipes to Make in a Medieval Monastery,” another voice shouted, “and we’ve only gotten to recipe 38.”

“Brother Yannik loves cooking shows,” Brother Alonzo explained. Nicobobinus attempted to wear the mildly interested face of someone who would rather not be shot at just precisely that moment.

Brother Alonzo waved them forward to a narrow hatch with a ladder leading down.

“Do something!” Rosie hissed.

“Why is it always me who gets told to do something?” Nicobobinus hissed back.

“Because I don’t need to be told! I just do things!” Rosie replied. Then she was climbing down the ladder and Nicobobinus was climbing after her and Timorit was stepping with its long clawed toes directly into the same spots where Nicobobinus had already wrapped his fingers, causing Nicobobinus to hiss and pull his hands off the rung and almost fall onto Rosie before he caught himself. There was no further conversation until they were all gathered in the large room at the base of the ladder.

Four monks were sitting around a table piled high with sausages and bottles of wine and little bowls of olives. Each monk was sitting on a thick pillow, and the pillows were propped on top of metal boxes. The whole arrangement seemed quite cozy, and the room was warm and dry and smelled strongly of toasted spices.

Someone had a tablet propped up on a wine bottle, and they were all watching the cooking show. On the tiny screen a man in monkish robes was doing something unspeakable with an eel and a fillet knife. Nicobobinus spared a moment to admire the excellent cell reception the monks were managing to get in the belly of a ship. Maybe they had a wi-fi hub.

Brother Alonzo finished climbing down the ladder. The room that had been cozy with four monks in it was quite crowded with five monks, Nicobobinus, Rosie, and the dragon Timorit. Timorit in particular was small for a dragon but quite large for a scaled person breathing fire in the bottom of a boat.

“Where are they!” Timorit hissed.

“Who are these people and why have you brought them here?” one of the monks asked Brother Alonzo.

Timorit was sniffing deeply, its long snout pointing first one way and then another. “Cinnamon!” it said. “Nutmeg!”

“I thought we could make the scaled one act in the movies,” Brother Alonzo explained.

“Spices!” Timorit roared.

“It appears to have a rather limited vocabulary,” one of the monks replied. His sandaled feet were resting on a large wooden block.

“Where are they!” Timorit roared again.

“But quite expressive!” said another.

There was a quiet pause while Timorit breathed steam and the monk on the tablet advised drenching the eel with melted butter and then a coating of panko bread crumbs.

“Mik!” Timorit’s scaled belly worked in and out like a bellows as he built up a head of steam. “Mack! Mike, Malik! Where are you?”

Nicobobinus looked down at the metal boxes. They seemed to be warmer than they had been, based on the uncomfortable way that one of the monks flinched when his bare calves touched the metal below his pillow. The boxes were emitting an anxious wavering hum.

“Be quiet or I’ll shoot you!” Brother Alonzo said, waving his gun.

“But what if you missed?” Nicobobinus asked. He inched his way over to the nearest box as he talked. “You might hit one of your brothers here. Surely that’s not good behavior for a monk.”

“I’ve never missed!” Brother Alonzo said.

“Really?” Rosie said. “That’s just fascinating. I miss all the time. Exactly how often have you fired a gun?”

Brother Alonzo looked embarrassed. “Well.”

“It takes ever so much practice to be able to shoot really well,” Rosie said. “Why, I shot at Nicobobinus four times and didn’t hit him even once.” Rosie winked at Nicobobinus as she said it, which Nicobobinus did not find remotely comforting. Rosie’s winks were frankly terrifying.

“I refuse to be shot at by an amateur!” Nicobobinus shouted. 

“Really?” Rosie said. “You never minded before.”

“I refuse to be shot at by an amateur again!” Nicobobinus amended. “Four times was plenty. More than plenty.” He looked down at the box nearest him and noticed that the latch was on the back of the box, facing away from the table. Probably the steam puffing out of the boxes (from poor, overheated baby dragons, he thought) had clouded over the tablets. They’d faced the boxes away, which had probably made perfect sense when no one else was in the small room. Now it meant that no one noticed as Nicobobinus worked the latch loose with his foot.

“Be quiet,” Brother Alonzo said, “or I’ll shoot all of you.”

The four monks looked up from the table nervously. “Brother Alonzo,” one of the monks said, “if you put a hole through Brother Yannik’s new tablet, he will be seriously put out.”

“Indeed I will,” noted the monk with his sandals propped on the large hunk of wood, who must be Brother Yannik. “I just got this tablet, and I’ve only streamed half of the Apostolic Appetite cookery show.”

Nicobobinus looked down and saw a scaled nose peeking out of the box that he’d just unlatched. There was a tiny golden muzzle fitted around the baby dragon’s snout, and the scales around the edges of the gold had gone all fragile and gray. The rest of the dragon’s head was a delicate violet, the scales edged with irredescent edges in purple and green.

“Don’t worry, Brother Yannik, Brother Zekiel,” said the third monk, “I saw Brother Despicable take all the bullets out of his guns last week.”

The baby dragon that Nicobobinus had released was sneaking around the carpet, crouched quite low, to unlatch the next metal box.

Brother Zekiel gnawed on a hunk of salami. He worked the piece free, chewed, swallowed, licked greasy lips, and shrugged. “Brother Alonzo is a menace with that gun. Always waving it. Like an air traffic guide on a runway. Left, right, up, down.”

“It had to be done,” agreed Brother Despicable.

“There are no bullets in that gun,” observed Rosie.

“I knew you could find them!” shrieked Timorit, and belched a hot stream of fire at Brother Alonzo that charred the ends of Brother Alonzo’s whispy white hair and heated up the gun so that he dropped it.

The violet dragon had freed a leaf-green one, and each of them had slipped around the table to open one of the other remaining cages. Rosie was shouting enthusiastically at all five monks, doing an absolutely stellar job distracting them. Distraction came naturally to Rosie.

“Your mothers would be ashamed of you!” Rosie said. “Look at this table! It’s a disgrace! Crumbs everywhere, oil spilled in all the fabric, bottles of alcohol lying about half-drunk.” Rosie picked up a bottle of something clear that smelled like turpentine and waved it in excited arcs, spilling alcohol everywhere.

All four little dragons were free now. The violet and leaf green ones had been joined by a blockier baby dragon with orange scales and a slim shadow of a silver dragon. All of them looked a bit gray about the snouts where the golden muzzles bit into their scales, but they were moving smoothly. They kept their bodies low to the carpet and out of sight of the monks. 

Timorit looked down and saw the baby dragons. Its face glowed with happiness for half a second before it spotted the golden muzzles.

“You monsters.” Timorit said. It wasn’t a shout. It was the horrible noise a kettle makes when it has boiled dry and you pour new water into it without letting it cool off first. It was the noise of something dangerously close to shattering.

Fire poured out of Timorit’s mouth. It landed on the carpet, where it didn’t singe the baby dragons a bit. It landed on the splashes of petroleum-stinking alcohol that Rosie had spilled, and those lit up. It landed on the table, singing the sausages. It landed on the oily napkins, which caught smoldering fire.

“Innocent little children. They just wanted ice cream.” Timorit said. “They wanted to practice their singing. You put them in boxes! You chained them with gold.”

Rosie poured out the contents of her bottle directly into one of the fires, which leapt up to the ceiling of the little room. Rosie danced back in time to keep all her eyebrows, because she had a lot of experience with fire.

“You are all,” Rosie said, “very bad men.”

The voice of the monk on the television show warped and died mid-explanation of pan-frying the eel as the fire spread across the table and fried the tablet.

The monks leaped up from their seats on the boxes, which fell over now that they were no longer weighted down with baby dragons inside them.

“Miserable thieves!” cried Brother Alonzo.

“I know you are but what am I?” said Rosie.

“My tablet,” cried Brother Yannik.

“Our sausage,” cried Brother Zekiel.

“The dragons are escaping,” pointed out Brother Despicable, who was clearly the most sensible of the lot. It was true. The violet dragon’s scaled tail was just disappearing through the hatch at the top of the later. 

By this point, the room was a chaotic tangle of large angry monks, one large dragon, and spreading fire. Half the carpets and most of the table had caught fire.

Nicobobinus looked around the room, but there were no fire extinguishers anywhere. He waved madly at Rosie and pointed at the ladder. Soon the fire would rush up towards the air source and their only route of escape would be cut off. Nicobobinus really did not want to have to chop a hole in the side of the boat escape into the oily waters of the port. Besides, he did not have an axe.

Rosie, who did understand him when she tried, tossed her empty bottle at Brother Alonzo, dodged around Brother Ezekiel, and raced up the ladder.

That left just Nicobobinus and Timorit in the room full of monks. NIcobobinus looked doubtfully at the ladder. He was worried his numb feet might betray him and drop him off the ladder.

Timorit was fuming and mumbling about ice cream and betrayal and dripping bits of fire from its snout. It showed no sign of being ready to leave.

The monks were arguing desperately with each other and searching for the fire extinguishers that Nicobobinus had not been able to find. 

“I thought you bought the fire extinguishers!” Brother Yannik shouted.

“I told Brother Zekiel to do it,” Brother Despicable said.

“The Abbott said fire extinguishers were an unnecessary expense!” Brother Zekiel protested.

Nicobobinus decided to brave the ladder and got halfway up before his hand slipped.

A scaly arm caught him before he could fall off the ladder. TImorit tossed him up to the deck and followed after.

Rosie and the baby dragons were already on the pier. NIcobobinus hurried to join them. TImorit stopped and turned back.

“What are you doing?” Nicobobinus shouted over his shoulder as he hurried off the boat.

TImorit leaned down into the hatchway. NIcobobinus heard a splintering crack and then TImorit turned back with the ladder in its claws.

“I thought you might need help climbing down from this ship,” Timorit said toothily, “so I fetched you this ladder.”

Nicobobinus looked to the side of the ship, which had its own ladder. “I think the monks might need that ladder more than we do.”

“I’m certain they don’t,” Timorit said. It was carrying the long wooden ladder easily over one shoulder.

Perhaps the monks have an axe, Nicobobinus thought. It would do them good to take a swim. “No,” he agreed. “Perhaps they don’t.”

Timorit held the wooden letter steady as Nicobobinus climbed down to the pier.


	8. In Which Nicobobinus and Rosie Succeed in Purchasing Coffee-Flavored Gelato

Nicobobinus and TImorit stood and watched the ship for a moment. They could hear the faint shouts of the monks and the fainter crackle of fire.

Nicobobinus turned away. He saw Rosie had managed to locate some bolt cutters and was cutting the golden muzzles off the baby dragons.

The dragons, who were allergic to gold, looked better immediately. Rosie, who was not allergic to gold in the slightest, tucked the bits of muzzle away inside a piece of paper she wrapped in a plastic bag and stuck in her pocket.

“Timorit, Timorit!” Four high pitched voices chorused.

“We knew you would come. Those men were very rude. At first we burned them, but then they put those golden muzzles on us during our nap. And there was no singing practice, and we want to go home now.”

The small orange dragon cried a few smoking tears.

“Absolutely, we will all go home.” Timorit said.

“But first we should have ice cream,” said the silver one shyly.

Nicobobinus looked up and down the walkway. It was still early enough in the morning that it felt like night. He couldn’t spot any gelato carts or ice cream shops.

He did see a black ship, its rigging moving without hands to adjust it, cutting through the water towards the pier where they stood.

“Oh, the ship followed us!” Timorit said when it spotted it. “And it didn’t have any trouble folding back into a ship after all that time being an empty shop!”

“Dear old black ship,” Rosie said.

Nicobobinus had always felt the black ship liked Rosie better than it liked him. It was the same feeling he’d gotten about Lizette, his ex-girlfriend who had, it turned out, liked Rosie much better than she liked him. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Nicobobinus, Lizette had explained earnestly, wringing her hands. It was just that there was something about Rosie. Lizette had broken up with him and dated Rosie for about five days. Lizette sent them both postcards once a year. Nicobobinus was still fond of Lizette, even if she did like Rosie better, and that was exactly how he felt about the black ship.

Nicobobinus sighed. 

“It’s nothing like Lizette,” Rosie said, because she knew him disturbingly well.

“Still.”

“She’s not even my ship anymore.” Rosie said. “She belongs to Basilcat now, or maybe to Timorit?”

“Oh, I’m just borrowing her,” Timorit said. “She’s her own ship, but she still spends most of her time with Basilcat.”

The four baby dragons were twining anxiously around Timorit’s scaled shins and making tiny, forlorn, high pitched hissing noises, like damp hungry kittens.

“I’m glad you didn’t kidnap the babies after all,” Timorit said.

“I’m glad we found them,” Nicobobinus said.

“This is a lot of gladness and too much sentiment,” Rosie said. “Go home now. Shoo. We’ll miss you very much.”

“You could visit sometime,” Nicobobinus said.

“The ship will have ice cream for them,” Timorit said, looking down at their little scaled heads.

“Say hello to the dragon Ashkanet for us,” said Nicobobinus.

“So long! Farewell!” Rosie said brightly, though Nicobobinus could tell there were tears in her eyes.

They watched as the dragons walked up the gangplank onto the ship and the ship sailed itself away from the pier. 

Rosie dried her eyes angrily on Nicobobinus’s sleeve. 

The port was a long way from Nicobobinus’s house, and they were both quite tired. They were only halfway home when the sun came up high enough to shine down between the narrow buildings.

Nicobobinus led them into a small and shabby gelateria where the fact that Rosie’s shirt was burned at the edges and NIcobobinus’s pants were on inside out would not be too noticeable amidst the general squalor of tourists and university students.

He bought himself a dish of chili-vanilla, and Rosie a double scoop of coffee gelato. They leaned against the wall, letting the cold ice cream soothe their smoke-edged throats. “I finally bought you a cup of coffee,” NIcobobinus said.

“You did.” 

“I didn’t think you’d want espresso for a little while, because, you know.”

“The dragons.”

“Yes.”

“You were right.” They ate gelato in the sunlight.

“Rosie,” Nicobobinus said.

“Yes?”

“I get to plan our next adventure.”

“Of course you do,” Rosie said. Nicobobinus could tell she didn’t believe him.

When Nicobobinus showed up outside her window the next weekend dangling from a hot air balloon and told her she had to come with him immediately, she was very much astonished. But she came with him, and she even remembered to put her pants on right side out and lace both her shoes, because Rosie was prepared for anything. But that was a different story, and besides, it hadn’t happened yet.

They ate the last of their gelato and went home, where they slept peacefully until the afternoon. They didn’t see the dragons or the black ship again for quite some time, but that is really and truly a different story.

And I should know. After all, I am Basilcat, and the black ship tells me things.


End file.
